**** Nightcrawler (Classic) **** Updated (1/4/19)

Comments

It really bothers me that the power doesn’t indicate the most prevelant color in its description. It’s annoying. I usually just get a random color that half the time I can’t use. The cascades and crits are nice though. I think he’s solid/serviceable. But there are still at least 30 characters I’d take over him. I also believe there will one day be a broken combo with him and he’ll shoot up the meta down the road.

Eyeball it, after using it for a while, im right 75% of the time.

You can bring Black Bolt (who is not a bad pairing), he makes charged tiles of the most present color.

Devs are aware we want the indicator, Brigby relayed its in the backlog but not a priority as its too much work (???), that's the last we heard of it. Meanwhile Lockjaw has the same indicator coded in one of his abilities...

It really bothers me that the power doesn’t indicate the most prevelant color in its description. It’s annoying. I usually just get a random color that half the time I can’t use. The cascades and crits are nice though. I think he’s solid/serviceable. But there are still at least 30 characters I’d take over him. I also believe there will one day be a broken combo with him and he’ll shoot up the meta down the road.

Eyeball it, after using it for a while, im right 75% of the time.

You can bring Black Bolt (who is not a bad pairing), he makes charged tiles of the most present color.

Devs are aware we want the indicator, Brigby relayed its in the backlog but not a priority as its too much work (???), that's the last we heard of it. Meanwhile Lockjaw has the same indicator coded in one of his abilities...

Eyeballing it and being right doesn’t give me the color I want or need. I want Purple. Every time. But Queb just why explained that doesn’t work. I could say Rogue is the best battery in the game because “she can fuel any color you need”. But it doesn’t work so well when every opponent has the same strongest color or colors you don’t care about. The difference between Rogue and Crawler is that you can at least plan for Rogue knowing the strongest colors beforehand (and even with that, the consistency of Vulture makes him better). Whereas with Crawler you have no idea what board you’ll get and it will usually be heavy in colors you aren’t chasing by the time you Bamf.

Well there's your first mistake, using purple to make more purple rarely works (exception, Switch/NC/PX because Nightcrawler is boosted).

Sure it's cute to make more purple and you win easily but you're much better off using purple to make another color and that is where the versatile part comes in. He also benefits from having a team that can use 4, 5 or even 6 colors.

As quebbster mentionned, as you chase purple you remove most it from the board so that's why you should try for another color. It works a lot better that way when you realize he can feed about anyone with expensive abilities (that are not purple).

Pair him with a high-level 5* if you have one, try generating their colors.

Exactly. While boosted I suggest intentionally avoiding blue matches so that it will build up on the board (even if the enemy uses blue it will accum.). Then when you are ready, it is a great way to build a bunch of blue at once, by Bamf-ing when blue matches are ready to be made on the board. Before firing your blue, ensure the enemy team has enough of their strongest color by then so that you get a good amount of damage from it - and steal a bit for yourself.

Now, NC should seem like a faster character (except his blue), but I find myself waiting a lot to fire his other powers off, and that can stink. Don't use purple too early (or whatever color is your strongest) because you need to have 10+ of your teams strongest color on hand when you fire his red power for full effect. Wait on purple until blue is readily available on the board, etc.

Well there's your first mistake, using purple to make more purple rarely works (exception, Switch/NC/PX because Nightcrawler is boosted).

Sure it's cute to make more purple and you win easily but you're much better off using purple to make another color and that is where the versatile part comes in. He also benefits from having a team that can use 4, 5 or even 6 colors.

As quebbster mentionned, as you chase purple you remove most it from the board so that's why you should try for another color. It works a lot better that way when you realize he can feed about anyone with expensive abilities (that are not purple).

Pair him with a high-level 5* if you have one, try generating their colors.

I didn’t say I use purple to make more purple. I said I fire it and usually get a color I can’t use.

My point (that I think you missed?) is that the character doesn’t work the way you said he does. You don’t get whatever color you want. IF it worked that way I’d spam the board with purple, because what you call “cute” I call winfinite. And it does work when Purple is the color triggered. I've had it where the enemy doesn't get a turn because of Purple on Purple on Purple. But the fact is he’s pretty random. You can try to control for the randomness a bit by matching certain colors but he's still random.

Using your example, sure I could try to make it so Blue is most prevalent on the board, and then get lots of Blue with a single Purple cast and then wait for the enemy to stack a certain color, and then probably get one cast of Crawler's weak Blue for some okay damage.

Or I could play literally any of the other 30+ better characters that don't rely on as much luck and setup to be efficient.

I had him champed a little while ago, but really only used him for the first time during the recent Deadpool vs MPQ where he was boosted. It wasn't very appealing since using Nightcrawler meant I couldn't use boosted 5* Gambit, so that certainly coloured my experience.

I found that, occasionally, he was very good. I was able to get BAMF generating Purple and used that to refuel itself over and over until I had cascaded the entire enemy team to death in a single turn. That happened probably twice. I thought it was actually very long and tedious - because I was primarily generating Purple to cast BAMF again, so it was entirely dependant on match (and crit) damage. Even with animations off, I found it to be a drag.

What I did enjoy was Nightcrawler's Red. It seemed to have good damage and I at least could easily know what colour I had to chase to get the higher damage value.

Blue is... well, all characters have three powers now, so Nightcrawler needs to have it by design. Even boosted and at Rank 5, I found that I was unimpressed with its damage output. That's because it's dependant on a specific enemy AP pool. Mordo's Purple is a much bigger threat, since it targets the highest AP pool - if the enemy has a dead colour, that can end up being a fairly hefty amount of damage.

I champed Nightcrawler ahead of Sandman, but if I could do it all over again I'd pick Sandman first because I had to sell 4 or 5 covers before I finally got to champ him, whereas I've only had 2 covers for Nightcrawler in the same time. I would have been able to double dip on the Sandman champ reward at 280.

Kurt and Switch with Prof X is way more random than with Carol. With only 5 yellow you have MUCH MORE control. Once you get 7 purple and 5 yellow you can just wait until Switch’s CD is at a good spot to either give you a 5 or just put 5 purple on the field and not match (which is even better).

Then you use Kurt’s Bamf and winfinite.

With Prof, you’re basically waiting every 3 turns, then 6, then 9 and praying for crit tile setup. With Carol, you speed up the process and have more control.

A partner you are all overlooking is Quake. Nightcrawler's blue is bad you have to do too much to benefit from it, her blue is a perfect match for him because it allows you to remove a color from the board or reduce it enough so it is not longer the max color. Now if the next color is not the one you are after you are still in the same hole which is why he is a middle to middle low tire character, he is to niche to find his way onto most teams.

When he works he is one of the most enjoyable characters to play but he is too limited in his options to be a top character. Look at the hoops some of you are trying to jump through to say he is a great character (in game), Winfinite or if x, y, z happens watch out. If you have to make that many conditions to justify a character as good he is not that good. With that logic I could say that Doc Ock is the best 5 in the game because if you do all the **** you have to do with his green you win the game. The only problem is you a puddle of goo on the ground 8 turns before any of those conditions are met.

Tried NC, Prof X, & Riri on first match and killed the other team on second turn. This only worked because purple was most prevalent. Other attempts were mixed unless purple was most prevalent. Biggest problem is that NC's first bamf rarely generates a crit, so you have to get two bamfs in a row, once that happens you're pretty set.

NC & Prof X are required for this, suggested thirds:- Riri- Switch- Chavez (less helps it get started more doubles down on bonus' for each crit)

That being said prevalence of Gambit and Chavez teams put a damper on testing as both are hard to win against with this team unless winifinite is running by turn 3. It seems the best BOP team is probably Gambit + Chavez + whoever (ideally Bolt if you have him).

It's certainly fun when it works, this is a screenshot from the first attempt where I killed on the second turn:

i get it now. Going for infinite Bamfs is fun but that not REALLY what he’s for I think. If you have a team that has spread out colors except purple and the other colors are all active, that’s what you use Bamf for. And if your strongest color builds up, you use Kurt’s red. If you’re unfortunate enough to get a field that doesn’t take advantage of it but the opponent AI does, then you use his blue.

I think his best partner is Mystique. Her blue at 5 basically changes the boards most common color to black or purple. Pair them with Lockjaw to see which color is most present and you're good to go. But, as it has been pointed out, bamfinite is still slow, so I switched up Prof X for Lockjaw. Mystique and Prof X strongest is blue, NC is purple, so you're covered no matter who is tanking.

First - If you have the Sharon Carter support at LVL 4, it gives you a chance of getting extra purple AP whenever your character makes a purple match. Bamf-inite gets even easier with this support equipped to Nightcrawler. My son has pulled this support twice, while everything else he has is LVL 1. On the bright side, the dupe got him 7000 rISO to level it up! At the lower levels, it increases his red and blue damage, which is also helpful.

Second - Is it that much harder to query "Most Common Color on board" than it is to query "Most power color for opposing team" that several other abilities do. XFW's Surgical Strike lists it in the ability description. Is Surgical Strike six different abilities as well?

First - If you have the Sharon Carter support at LVL 4, it gives you a chance of getting extra purple AP whenever your character makes a purple match. Bamf-inite gets even easier with this support equipped to Nightcrawler. My son has pulled this support twice, while everything else he has is LVL 1. On the bright side, the dupe got him 7000 rISO to level it up! At the lower levels, it increases his red and blue damage, which is also helpful.

Second - Is it that much harder to query "Most Common Color on board" than it is to query "Most power color for opposing team" that several other abilities do. XFW's Surgical Strike lists it in the ability description. Is Surgical Strike six different abilities as well?

Nice idea. I was looking at X-Jet Support on Nightcrawler paired with Professor X.

If you are in 4 star land try Nightcrawler, Cloak and Dagger and Mordo. Keep C&D spamming black all blue goes to Mordo to help speed up generation of black so when you cast Nightcrawler's pink you will get large cascades and you can start hammering your opponents with Mordo's black. Nightcrawler excells at amplifying feeders so you will be hitting with Mordo's black aoe (assuming they are charged) at least once a turn and will cut through teams. This team is even better when one of those 3 is boosted like the last event.

According to the description on BAMF!, Nightcrawler goes airborne if he was going to take team damage. However, if he gets hit by 2-star Thor's Call to Storm, he takes normal damage when he's in front. Is this supposed to happen, or is this a bug.